[Petra Pasternak]
With all that money sloshing about in China and Hong Kong, it’s a wonder the drooping U.S. stock market still holds appeal. But it does. Am Law 100 lawyers interviewed for a Recorder story (free reg. req.) about doing business in China say they see growing opportunities in representing Chinese companies looking to go public in New York.
One of them is Michael Gisser. The senior partner in Skadden’s China practice said his firm has been ramping up the ability to handle work for privately-owned Chinese companies, particularly in the tech space.
The Hong Kong stock exchange may be a hopping venue for follow-on fundraising – Gisser says it had the largest dollar volume for secondary listings in the world last year – but it sure isn’t easy for companies that hold promise, but don’t have a lot to show for it yet. Gisser said Hong Kong requires businesses to have three years of positive net earnings before filing for an IPO there. “A lot of tech companies don’t have that,” he said. “That closes them out of Hong Kong as an IPO listing venue, so you’re listing on NASDAQ.”
“A U.S. listing is a very effective way for a company to establish itself as a global player,” Gisser noted. Just in July, Skadden advised Camelot Information Systems, Inc., a provider of enterprise application services among other things, in its approximately $150 million IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The same month, Skadden represented AutoNavi Holdings Limited, which provides digital map content and navigation and location-based sotware, in its July NASDAQ listing.
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